Led by Borough President-elect and
City Councilman James Oddo, a bipartisan group of elected officials is
calling for a total end to the bus lane camera program on Staten Island that
has generated tons of tickets for drivers who weren't intending to break any
rules.

"Until you fix these
situations, turn off the cameras and turn off the tickets," Oddo (R-Mid-Island/Brooklyn) told the
Advance.

The letter to DOT Commissioner
Janette Sadik-Khan, signed by the full City Council, Assembly and state Senate
delegations, calls the cameras "an experiment that has failed and must be
ended."

But even that wouldn't help some of
the residents who recently reached out to Oddo's office about being ticketed in
the lanes.

In the last two weeks, parents and
faculty at St. Dorothy's Academy on Hylan Boulevard have reported to Oddo that
they've been ticketed, too. The trouble lies in how close the school's driveway
is to Old Town Road -- just a few yards, making it very difficult to get out of
the bus lane before the intersection.

"Sometimes it's physically
impossible for you to safely navigate yourself from the right lane that you
turned into, navigate from that right lane, which is the bus lane, to the
center lane," Oddo said. "Now you've failed to make the first right.
You get a ticket."

The cameras were originally approved
by the state legislature in Albany -- and state Sen. Diane Savino (D-North Shore/Brooklyn) still believes allowing buses to travel in their own lane can
be the next best thing for a borough that doesn't have trains.

"However, as usual, the New
York City Department of Transportation can't seem to get it straight, so
they're fining people when they shouldn't be -- we know all the horror
stories," Ms. Savino said. "It's been somewhat of an unmitigated
disaster."

Until they can get the concept
right, she said, it simply shouldn't be in place.

"It's time for it to end,"
she said. "If you can't do the program right, then you've got to end
it."

A Department of Transportation spokesman said the DOT had just received the letter and hadn't reviewed it -- but had worked with elected officials "since the day the cameras were installed."

"We will
continue to address any other specific issues brought to our attention as we
work to keep the borough's bus lanes clear for Staten Island's bus riders," spokesman Nicholas Mosquera said.

After Councilman Vincent Ignizio
(R-South Shore) spoke with Ms. Sadik-Khan earlier this year, the Richmond
Avenue camera was shut off, and the DOT promised to evaluate similar locations
on Hylan Boulevard.

"Somehow, they missed
this," Oddo said of the problems at St. Dorothy's. "I'm tired now,
months into this fight, of hearing of my constituents in this three-card-monte
game."

Another constituent was ticketed leaving
the 7-Eleven on Hylan Boulevard in New Dorp, Oddo said. The driver exited into
the right bus lane, but with the driveway so close to the nearest intersection,
couldn't change to the middle lane safely in time. When he tried to have the
ticket dismissed, the driver was asked by a judge to provide a receipt from the
7-Eleven - which he didn't have for a cup of coffee.